


Be Good

by foxsgloves



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Adopted Monster Family Relations, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Second Person, protect this child, that feel when your adopted family expects you to save their entire kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7432874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxsgloves/pseuds/foxsgloves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're going to be a hero, they say.  You're going to save all monsterkind, they say.<br/>There's still a little time before that has to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Good

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for stopping by to read!

A week after they take you in, Mr. Dad Guy takes you to see the barrier. 

He tried to get you to call him Dad, at first, but the word got stuck on your tongue like a big lump of moldy bread.  He’s nothing like your old dad, your first dad, not with his huge bumbling feet and his giant horns and his broad hands calloused by gardening tools.  You call him Mr. Dad Guy instead, and he laughs, warm lines crinkling around his eyes, and you figure that’s okay and you keep at it.

It’s just you and Mr. Dad Guy today.  Mrs. Toriel and your new brother went to the grocery store to buy stuff to make butterscotch pie.  Mister Dad Guy pretends he found a flower tucked behind your ear and says “I lilac you a lot!” and you smile wide for him even if you can’t choke out a giggle.

The barrier is vast and noisy and awful.  It keeps flashing, pulsing, grainy black and white like television static, and it hums.  It’s not a real sound, but you can hear it anyway, rumbling in your belly and throbbing in your fingers and whistling, piercing, shrieking in your eardrums.  You hate it, you hate it, you want to clap your hands over your ears and run away, but Mr. Dad Guy is watching you so you square your shoulders and bite your lip bloody and clench your fists by your sides, your nails digging into your palms.

“This is it,” says Mr. Dad Guy, and you can barely hear even his grumbly, gravelly voice over that terrible hum.  “This is what keeps us trapped down here.  This is what keeps us from living on the surface.  Someday, Chara, someday very soon, you’re going to break it.”

“What do you want to go up there for?” you mumble, but the whine of the barrier swallows your words.

He squats down so he can look you in the eye and put his huge, heavy paws on your shoulders, and you can feel the heels of your new sneakers dig into the ground under their weight.  “Your eyes are so full of hope, Chara.  I know you were sent to us for a reason.  You’re the future of humans and monsters.  You’re going to be the one who saves us all.”

With your right hand you reach up towards it.  “Don’t touch it!” Mr. Dad Guy yells, and you flinch backward.  Your palm quivers an inch away.  All the hairs standing on end, your fingertips throbbing, like a shock from a car door.

You let your hand drop.  It aches, like when you’ve clutched your knitting needles for hours and hours.  Your little finger twitches. 

“It’s very dangerous.  Don’t ever touch it, until it’s time,” says Mr. Dad Guy.  You wonder if it would be like being struck by lightning.  You wonder if it would kill you.

He makes you show him your hand, just to see you didn’t actually touch it, and then he takes that hand and you go to the grocery store to catch up with Mrs. Toriel, and after that you don’t go back to the barrier anymore, and Mrs. Toriel gives you two slices of pie and your new brother sneaks you another piece later.

 

You were so afraid of Mrs. Toriel when you woke up, with your bloodied hands and bloodied mouth and her looming over you, all huge pale hide and teeth like icicles. 

You’re still afraid of her, because you want her to love you.  She has warm giant hands and the fur around her neck smells like kitchen spices and when she calls you “my child” it feels like pulling a warm sweater over your head.

Her eyes squeeze into a squint when she’s upset.  She makes that face when she finds half-eaten sandwiches gone brick-hard and spotty with mold under your pillow.  She makes that face when you when you get feverish with boredom and start throwing stuff during what she pretends to be school.  She makes that face when she’s come to find you, because you wandered off into backyard and took a nap in the dirt.

You want her to stoop down to hug you and stroke your hair back from your forehead and look at you the way she looks at her son.  It hurts like hunger, in your belly and gnawing at your bones.  It hurts worse than hunger.

 

Your new brother cries a lot.  He cries more than anyone else you’ve ever seen in your entire life.  He cries when he finds a dying ladybug on his windowsill, even though it’s just a bug and they only live for, like, a day, and he cries when his favorite cartoon character reunites with his dad, even though it’s cheesy enough to make you gag and anyway the dad is kind of an asshole. 

He cries when you yank on his ear instead of slapping you back or something like a normal person, and he cries even harder when you try to get him to quiet down because then he’s mad at you and of course he cries when he’s mad, too.  “That’s awful, Chara,” he sniffles, rubbing his runny nose with the back of his hand.  Even though you were just trying to help him out.

He forgives you later.  He always forgives you later.  He may be a tattletale and a crybaby and kind of dim but he’s your favorite, your favorite in the whole world.  You love how his eyes light up when he watches his stupid cartoons and you love how he shrieks and giggles when you do your creepy face for him, and you love how when you skin your knees while you’re playing he makes the skin grow over for you, painless and perfect.

He asks you to make matching best friend sweaters for the two of you.  “Because we’re best friends, aren’t we, Chara?” he asks, his nose all scrunched up, and you almost say no just to see what would happen, what he’d do. 

Just cry, probably. 

What you actually say is, “Yeah, I guess we are.”

 

And you knit some sweaters.  There’s something like relief on Mrs. Toriel’s face when you ask her if she’ll get you some yarn and needles for knitting, because now maybe you won’t leave ink scars on the walls from throwing pens during fake school.  Asriel gets fancy private tutors, because he’s a prince.  You have to share.

You get some green yarn (your favorite color) and yellow yarn (Asriel’s favorite color) and you work all night and all day on them, all through the boring lessons and through TV hour and on your bed past lights out.

You and Asriel wear your matching sweaters a few weeks later when Mr. Dad Guy introduces you to the whole Monster Kingdom.  You stand beside them at their thrones in his garden and hold out your hand and shake the monster’s hands, or whatever they’ve got instead of hands, or if they don’t have any appendages you just kind of wave a little bit, and you say, “Greetings,” to all of them in your best serious voice, like Mrs. Toriel does.  You stand up straight like she does, too, and you look at her out of the corner of your eye to see if she notices you.

Mrs. Toriel is not looking at you.  She is looking out over the huge, sprawling, seething crowd of monsters, and she seems very tired.

Everybody, like you, loves Mr. Dad Guy, and they laugh at all his jokes and giggle when he pats their shoulder and tell him they wish for his garden to grow huge and strong this year.  “Have hope!” he booms at each of them, in turn, and they all stand up a little straighter like they really believe it. 

Everybody, like you, is a little afraid of Mrs. Toriel, and gives her lots of space when they walk by and dip their heads when she says “Greetings” and don’t look her in the eye.

All the monsters are really friendly to you.  “It’s nice to meet you, Chara!” they say when they clasp your hand.  “We’re so glad you’re here!” they say with huge, fang-filled smiles.  Some of them even hug you, wrapping you up in their fluffy feathered arms, coiling you beneath their slick scales.  You go limp and let them.

They all hug Mr. Dad Guy too, and he picks them up and swings them around.  “How soon, how soon?”  they ask him.  “When will be free again?” they chant.  He pats their shoulders and grunts and mutters until Mrs. Toriel fixes her stare and the chants pop like soap bubbles.

“Asgore, I think that’s enough,” she says, and for a second you think he’s going to fight her about it, but then his eyes roll to the side and he shrugs, and you all go back home.

Mrs. Toriel gives you two pieces of pie, and tells you to have however many you want.  You take four.

 

You say to Asriel as you tug the petals off a yellow flower, “If you tell me about the barrier I’ll go steal you a snack.”

Mr. Dad Guy sure loves his yellow flowers.  His garden is choked with them.  The human village where you lived had flowers like this, whole fields and fields of them, spilling out like a messy quilt on the edge of town.  One time you tried to eat them.  You plucked off petal after yellow petal and put them on your tongue to let them melt, like candy.  Only they burned as they melted, and afterwards you just threw up a lot.

He giggles.  “I’ll tell you anyway, Chara.  You don’t have to like, bribe me or anything.  We’re friends.”

You roll over onto your belly, kicking your feet aimlessly back and forth like you’re trying to swim.  “So tell me.”

“The barrier was made by humans to keep us trapped down here.  We need seven human souls to break it.  Only a monster soul and a human soul together can pass through it.”  He recites evenly, perfectly.  He always pays rapt attention in lessons.

“So I need a monster soul?  Like, I gotta wait for some monster to bite it and then grab it?”  Asriel nods, his nose quivering.  You flop over onto your back, your arms spread.  “Damn.  That’s morbid.” 

Asriel shrugs, or maybe it’s more of a shiver.  “You won’t have to wait long.  Dad says… he says we’re dropping like flies down here.”

You study your empty hands, wondering what it would feel like to hold someone else’s soul, to gobble it up like candy.  Would it taste good?  Would it taste like anything? 

“So I have to eat somebody’s nasty soul and then go collect a bunch more human ones?”

“You don’t eat it,” he scoffs, as much as somebody like Asriel can scoff, peering at you from beneath his ear.  “But the rest of it, yeah.  You’re gonna be a hero, Chara.”  He flops backward into the flowers and mumbles, “I wish I could do it.”

You curl up like a dried leaf.  “Well then go do it, then,” you mutter.

He rolls closer to you. “Chara?  Are you mad?”

“A little.”

A few minutes later, fiddling with a lopsided bloom, he asks, “Are you still mad?”

“Yes I’m still mad,” you grumble. 

“I’m sorry!  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to make you mad at me!”

“You can go get the snacks then, to prove it,” you say and turn your shoulder to him. 

He does, because you asked him.  It’s why he’s your favorite.

 

Mrs. Toriel and Mister Dad Guy take you down to the spot where all the waterfalls are.  It is called Waterfall.  You think maybe somebody ought to take away Mister Dad Guy’s naming privileges.

Asriel clasps his hands and twiddles his foot and wheedles and whines with Mrs. Toriel for permission for the two of you to go play by yourselves.  Mrs. Toriel and Mister Dad Guy have settled themselves on the big striped picnic blanket they brought and he’s steaming tea with his fire magic while you watch with big, jealous eyes.

“I… suppose,” says Mrs. Toriel, raking her eyes over all the flowers and bushes and pools.  “But be sure to be back by the time the tea is brewed.” 

“Then we can get this par-tea started!” says Mr. Dad Guy with his braying laugh.  Mrs. Toriel laughs too. 

She strokes your snarl of bangs back from your forehead.  “Be good, all right?”

“Chara, come on!”  Asriel hops a few rocks across one of the pools.  “I’ve got something really cool to show you!”

The really cool thing is a flower.  “It’s just a flower,” you say, crossing your arms.

“Say something to it!”

“I’m not talking to a flower.”

“Come on, please?  I promise it’s cool.”

“Fine,” you grumble, and clasp one of its crusty, curled old leaves like you’re shaking a hand.  “Greetings.  I’m Chara.”

“ _Greetings.  I’m Chara,”_ you say, only it’s your muffled voice coming out of the flower, all tinny and weird like when you hear yourself on the phone.

“It’s an echo flower.”  Asriel pokes at a blue petal.  “It repeats the last thing it heard.  It’s cool, huh?”

It may be the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.

“It’s kinda cool, I guess.”  _It’s kinda cool,_ echoes the flower in a nasal drawl.  “Does my voice really sound like that?”

Asriel giggles.  “Yeah it does,” he says, but he looks a little sheepish when you curl your lip at him.  “You know, usually people say their wishes to echo flowers, and then when it repeats enough times it comes true.”  He strokes a petal between his fingers.  “Hey, Chara.  Do you want to know my wish?  My most secret wish?”  You bob your head.  Even a dweeb like Asriel doesn’t give away his secrets for free all the time.  “You can’t laugh at me, though.”

“I’m not gonna laugh at you.”

“You have to promise,” he insists, and holds out his little finger like you showed him.  You swear.  “Okay.  My wish is… someday, when the barrier is gone, I want to climb this mountain.  I want to sit at the very top and see the sun and the sky and see out over the whole world.”

He’d never get near the top.  You snort.

“Hey!  You promised!  You said you wouldn’t laugh at me!”

“No, you don’t get it.  I’m not laughing ‘cause it’s funny.”

“That’s sure what it looks like.”

You get a heavy feeling in your stomach like you’ve swallowed a rock.  “You don’t get it!  Even if we got out of here, you’d never get to climb the mountain.  The humans wouldn’t let you.”

His nose quivers.  “That can’t be true.”

“Of course it’s true.  Humans are terrible.  You don’t know anything about it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well I’m the one who lived up there and why do you think I climbed the mountain people never come back from?  It’s ‘cause I never wanna go back, ever again!” You huff and clap a hand over your mouth, your throat closing up with panic.  Mistake, mistake, mistake.

Asriel looks at you and blinks slowly.  You hate it when he looks at you like that, like you’re a sour fruit he bit into by mistake.  You hate it.  You kick at the roots of the echo flower and it droops sideways, shrieking _Why do you think I climbed the mountain_ and you fall to the ground ripping it up at the roots.  Asriel watches as you toss it away into the underbrush.

“But you’re a human,” he says, “and you’re not terrible.”

“That’s my secret,” you say, “What I just said.  You can’t tell your mom and dad about it.  Or else we’re not friends anymore.  Then you won’t have any.”

He stares at you with his eyes all big for awhile.  You shuffle back down to where Mrs. Toriel and Mr. Dad Guy wait with fresh tea, him a few steps behind you, his head bent over, and no one says anything.

 

It’s Gyftmas, which is like just like Christmas but in the underground they call it another name, possibly because Mr. Dad Guy thought it sounded good.  You’re really not sure.

You give Mr. Dad Guy the sweater you made for him, big and fluffy and pink with his name across the chest in curly letters.  It took you four tries and it catches on his horns when he pulls it on and tears a big snaggle in the shoulder.  He assures you it can be fixed and that he loves it and pats you on the shoulder, and you swallow past your hot, scratchy throat even though obviously you weren’t going to cry, because big kids don’t.  You’re a big kid.

Big kids shouldn’t get excited about getting presents, either, so you bite back your grin and force yourself to open the wrapping paper slowly, without tearing.  Mrs. Toriel got you a box of colored pencils, the good smooth kind, and a new set of watercolors and some thick, creamy paper.

She stoops to give you a hug.  You press your face into her shoulder, just for a little bit.

Mr. Dad Guy got you more yarn, and it’s all in a hideous eye-searing rainbow pattern but whatever, you can probably get some decent scarves out of it, before you run out of time.  And Asriel got you a big box of chocolate.  The kind that’s so big it’s got multiple layers to dig through.  You tell yourself you’re going to save it but you stuff half of it in your face when Mrs. Toriel’s back is turned and then she takes it away to put on one of the high shelves.

“We’ve got something special for you,” she says, her big claws fluttering.  “I’m going to fetch them from the hiding place.”

Her hiding place is inside one of the big cabinets, which is pretty good, because it’s the one place you and Asriel can’t reach even when you’re working together.  So what’s inside is a surprise.  It’s two lockets, one golden and one of some shiny red metal that probably only monsters can make.

The gold one is for you.

You snap it open—it takes a couple tries with your ragged, too-short fingernails—and there’s a picture inside, of you, and Mrs. Toriel resting a paw on your head and Asriel with his hand on your shoulder and Mister Dad Guy gathering all three of you into a hug, his cape hanging down like a tent flap.  You remember taking it, that day they introduced you to all the monsters.

You’ve never seen a picture of yourself before.  Somehow you look different than you do in the mirror, your eyes wide, your cheeks pink and round as grapefruits in their fixed smile.  It ached so much, to hold that smile all day.

Beside you, Asriel squeals in delight, yanking the chain over his head without bothering with the clasp so he almost snaps it.  Mrs. Toriel scolds him, gently, but enough to give you a sick warm feeling rolling around in your stomach, because it’s not you.  “Put it on, Chara!  Put it on so we match!”

“Well, Chara?  Do you like it?”  Mrs. Toriel bends over you to smooth your hair back.  “We thought it might be nice for you to have a picture of the family.  So you can look at it whenever you feel lonely.”  When you’ve left them.  When you’ve gone back to the humans.

You clear your throat.  “I guess you could say… that I’ve got a real heart of gold?”  Your voice is crackly and your delivery is all off, but Mr. Dad Guy picks you up and holds you against his heaving, shuddering chest and he laughs until a tear squeezes out of one of his eyes.

 

“Hey, Azzy.  Tell me again about what happens when a monster takes a human soul.”

He glances up from the piano keys, shifting his camera away.  He likes to film himself playing with the camera he got for Gyftmas.  He plays the wrong note a lot.  But you still like to sit and listen to him sometimes.

He looks away because he’s still mad at you about the flowers in Mister Dad Guy’s pie.  He taps a finger against one of the high keys, his eyes wet.  “Oh, come on,” you say, “are you still hung up on that?  He’s gonna be fine.  He’s getting better already.  People get sick all the time.”

“No they don’t.”  He slides a paw down the keys.

You snort.  “Are you gonna tell me or not?”

He looks up at the ceiling, like he does when he’s thinking about not doing what you want.  He will anyways, though.  It’s why he’s your favorite.

“They share,” he says.  “They’re both in the same body and they can take turns, like piloting a robot together or something.  Also, the monster gets really powerful!  But… the human has to die first, though.”  He shrugs.  “Or at least that’s what all the books say.  I mean, there haven’t been any humans to try with in a really long time.”

You glance over at your brother, at his big shining eyes and his wide honest mouth.  He’s such a suck-up dweeb you know he’d never do anything with a human soul he wasn’t supposed to.  He’d follow all the rules and look both ways before he crossed the street and never hurt anyone, ever.

Unless they really deserved it.  Unless you told him to.

Unless.

 

Mrs. Toriel asks you to help her with the dishes while Mr. Dad Guy and Asriel go do the weeding in the garden.

“Chara,” says Mrs. Toriel as you place a cracked dish into its rack, “I think we all need to have a talk.”

You stiffen up like you just walked outside into a cold wind with no coat, and look at her over your shoulder, your fingers clamped around the dish.  Mrs. Toriel bends down to pry it from you.

“Chara, you never talk about your life up on the surface.”

“’Cause there isn’t anything to say,” you say, too quickly, the panic clamping your chest like a big fist and squeezing the words out.  “Really.  There isn’t.” 

You eye the kitchen door as she sets another dish in its place.  That’s no good, though.  Mrs. Toriel is a lot bigger and faster than you.  So you breathe hard through your nose and your tight throat and clench a bowl in your clammy hands.

“Asriel says you don’t want to go back up to the human world,” she begins.

“Well, he lied.  Why would he say something dumb like that?” you mutter.

“Because I asked him.  He’s been acting…. Not like his usual self lately, and I asked him what was wrong.”

You shrug your stiff shoulders.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“Child, I’m not asking what’s wrong with him.”  She bends down and cups your cheeks between her broad paws.  “I don’t know what happened to you up there, what made you… like this.”  She rubs at your hair and you turn your face from her.  “But I want you to know that we’re your family now, and we’ll still be your family after we all go up to the surface.”

“I know that,” you say, with your best big-cheeked smile, almost wide enough to push her hands away.  “I’m not stupid.”

She sets a paw atop your head and closes her eyes.  “I wish we did not have to ask this of you.  I wish there was another, better way.”

You hold your fixed smile.

“I think it’s time we discussed this with Asg—your dad.  We’re going to have a talk when he gets back.  How does that sound.”

You clasp one of her wrists and then let it go, just as quickly.  “We don’t have to.”

“Yes, my child, I think we do.”

“No, really.  We don’t.  I’ll be good and everything.”

“We,” she says quietly, “are going to talk with Asgore.  Why don’t we both wait here until he gets home?”

You’re so cold you could start shaking, even under your big puffy sweater, hugging yourself as she switches on the TV to some nonsense noise.  “Mom,” you say, and she leans toward you, “I have to go pee.”

“Of course, my child,” she says, and when you get to the hall and you see her back is turned you run out the front door.

You lift the latch on the front gate so it yawns open, then skin your hands scrambling up into your hiding place, up in one of the little trees in their yard.  If you ball yourself up tight and don’t move Mrs. Toriel can’t see you up there, even when she comes looking.

She wanders up and down the rows of flowers, calling and crooning your name, and you rub your nose into your sweater and on your hands and wait and try not to make sniffly sounds. 

Eventually she goes back inside, and you think you can hear her pick up the phone, and then you curl up closer when Mr. Dad Guy comes back through the gate with Asriel riding on his shoulders.  Mrs. Toriel yells something and Mr. Dad Guy shouts back and they all go inside.

You lie frozen on the branch for a while, your hands at your throat, until you hear Asriel scuffling around at the base of the tree.  He was always pretty good at hiding games.

“Hey, Chara.  Are you up there?”  You can hear him sniffling.  “Are you okay?”

You rest your head on your folded arm.

“Are you mad at me?  For telling?”

You grit your teeth and turn away. 

“Are you really going to ignore me?”  You don’t say anything.  “I thought it would be better.  Mom and Dad kinda noticed on their own.”  You don’t say anything.  “Are you really not going to talk to me?”  His voice is starting to wobble.  You don’t say anything.

He goes back into the house.

Eventually you’re all dried and stiff like a wrung-out washcloth, and your legs are starting to cramp, and your stomach is cramping in hunger and you have to go back.  You know how these things work.  You always have to go back, eventually.  You swipe the last of your snot on your arm and go back inside. 

You can hear Asriel outside the door to your room.  He’s the loudest crier you ever heard.  You pace outside your door and listen to his stupid loud whiny crying, and your anger swells and swells until your arms are stiff and your teeth grind together and you kick the door, really hard, hard enough to rattle it in its frame.  You kick it again for good measure.  It rattles, your teeth rattle. 

You don’t feel better.

You creep back down the hallway and into the kitchen, away from the basement where Mr. Dad Guy and Mrs. Toriel’s raised voices climb the walls and claw scratchy panic up your arms and neck.  You clap one hand over your ear and press your other to your shoulder.  There’s no one in the kitchen and your stomach is knotting itself, so you grab a handful of pie from the tin Mrs. Toriel left on the counter and and you go back outside.

The flowers whisper around you as you sit in the dirt but you can still hear them shouting, so you scoot and scoot until your shorts are about to slide off your hip but it’s quiet.

The pie is still hot, so hot it hurts your mouth, but you eat from your cupped hands until butterscotch is smeared all over your cheeks.  You pluck some petals from a flower, then wrap your fist around and yank it up by the roots, and another, and another, until there’s a little pile of them and you try to scrape the dirt from underneath your nails.

You’re curled up like a comma on the ground, your fists clenched and held against your throat with the locket between them when something big comes up behind you and you’re covered in Mr. Dad Guy’s broad shadow, cast by the lights of the house.

He looks down at all the flowers you ripped up and makes a little noise and you curl up tighter, your knees up in front of your belly, your bare hip pressed into the soft earth. 

“Howdy, kiddo,” he says. 

He kneels down next to you and puts his heavy paw on your shoulder and with the other tries to brush crusty flakes of pie off your cheeks.  “You know, some of these needed to come up.”  One of his claws catches on your bottom lip.

“Stay determined, Chara.  Everything’s going to be okay.”

The two of you sit like that, his paw on your shoulder while you huddle up like a snail.  Aboveground, you used to sit in the flower field like this, watching your shadow grow.  But it crouches, still, in front of you, because there is no day here, and no night.

So you don’t know how long it is before Mister Dad Guy pushes himself up with a grunt and offers you his paw and says, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

And you let him lift you up and carry you back to the house, even though it isn’t.  You know it isn’t.  Mr. Dad Guy isn’t that good a liar. 

Even you’re not that good.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this here fine archive has its fair share of Chara backstory fic, some of which are pulled off with a lot more skill than mine. But this idea wouldn't stop bothering me and I had to give it the old college try. Thanks for reading!


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